‘Nothing definite. I’m sending some PCs house-to house and I’ll wait to see what the SOCOs come back with. Johnson, can you liaise with them?’
Tanya looks disappointed, Judy stifles a yawn.
‘So it may just be natural causes,’ says Clough, biting into a Mars bar.
‘Stephenson thinks so. Cause of death was pulmonary haemorrhage. Bleeding on the lungs,’ he explains for Clough’s benefit.
‘What could cause that?’
‘Lots of things including infection or drug-taking.’
‘Did he take drugs, then? This curator bloke?’
‘His body showed signs of persistent drugs use. And I found a hundred grams of cocaine in his office.’
Clough whistles. ‘That’s a lot of Charlie.’
‘Do you think it was natural causes, boss?’ asks Judy.
Nelson pauses. ‘Most likely. There are a couple of odd things though.’ He tells the team about the letters. ‘Fuller, can you do some digging on the Elginists? Find out if they’ve ever been involved in anything dodgy. Clough, you and I might pay Lord Smith another visit.’
‘Great,’ says Clough, to general laughter. ‘Might get a tip for the National.’
‘The Necromancer,’ says Nelson. ‘He’s got a lot of bone apparently.’
As Ruth nears her house, she is aware of a strange humming noise on the air. Is it a bird, a low-flying plane, the coastguard’s helicopter? Perhaps it’s a bittern, whose low, booming call she sometimes hears at night. Thinking of birds reminds her of David, her previous next-door neighbour, who was the warden of the marshes. David knew every stick and stone of the Saltmarsh, he could recognise the call of any one of the hundreds of birds that use these wetlands as a pit-stop on their journey south, he could find his way across the treacherous quicksand in the dark and had once saved Ruth’s life. But David has gone, and if there’s a new warden, she hasn’t met them yet. As Ruth gets closer she sees that the sound is coming from Bob Woonunga, who is sitting on the grass in front of his house playing something which, from memories of Rolf Harris, she recognises as a didgeridoo.
She parks outside her cottage and gets Kate out of her car seat. Kate is now walking. She started at ten months, which is early according to the books. And while Ruth was proud of her daughter for reaching this milestone ahead of time (walking at ten months = first class honours degree from Cambridge), she can’t help thinking that it was easier when she could carry her everywhere. Now Kate struggles to be put down and totters purposefully over to Bob and his didgeridoo. Ruth follows, more reluctantly. Flint, lurking by Ruth’s front door waiting for his dinner, jumps over the fence and is the first to reach their new neighbour, rubbing himself lovingly around his legs.
‘Want,’ says Kate, pointing at the didgeridoo. This is one of her new words.
Bob puts down the long wooden pipe and says, ‘Hallo little neighbour. You were asleep when I met your mum.’ He reaches out and strokes Flint, who arches his back appreciatively. Ruth is shocked at the cat’s infidelity.
‘Mum,’ says Kate, putting a hand on the painted wood of the didgeridoo. ‘Mum, mum, mum.’
‘Careful Kate,’ says Ruth.
‘Oh, don’t worry.’ Bob’s smile seems impossibly wide. ‘It’s good to touch things. That’s how we learn, right?’
Ruth agrees that it is. Touch is an important sense for an archaeologist. She remembers how Erik could tell just by holding a stone tool how it had been made, and what it had been used for. He used to shut his eyes, she remembers, while running his thumb along the sharp edges of a flint. She supposes that one day she’ll stop thinking about Erik.
‘Is it hard to play?’ she asks, indicating the didgeridoo.
‘Have a go.’ He grins his endless grin again.
Ruth sits down on the grass and puffs and puffs but all she achieves is a sort of feeble farting noise. Kate laughs delightedly.
Bob blows again, an undulating, reverberating sound that seems oddly right out here in the wind and sky.
‘I’m not an expert on the didge,’ he says, putting the instrument on the ground, ‘but it’s a way of keeping in touch with home.’
‘Where is home?’ asks Ruth, settling herself more comfortably. It’s a mild evening and it’s curiously pleasant to be sitting out here on the grass as if it’s summer. The moon is up but it’s still light over the sea, the waves breaking in bands of silver and grey. A pair of geese fly overhead, calling mournfully.
‘Our home is in Dreamtime,’ says Bob. Then, laughing, he relents. ‘I’m one of the Noonuccal people from Minjerribah, the islands in the bay. North Stradbroke Island to you.’
This doesn’t mean very much to Ruth, whose only contact with Australia is a friend who emigrated there and now sends her irritating Christmas cards featuring Santa in swimming trunks. The islands in the bay have an exotic, foreign sound that seems to belong more to the Caribbean than to the land of surf and barbecues and good neighbours becoming good friends.
‘I think you know a friend of mine,’ she says. ‘Cathbad.’
‘Cathbad. Yes. He’s a brother.’
‘A brother?’
‘In spirit. We belong to a band of brothers. A group of like-minded people.’
‘The Elginists?’
Bob doesn’t seem surprised. ‘That’s right. We’re committed to the repatriation of our ancestors.’
‘Like the skulls at the Smith Museum?’
A shadow crosses Bob’s face, or maybe it’s just the evening light. The sky seems to have grown much darker in the last few minutes. Kate climbs onto Ruth’s lap and starts pulling her hair experimentally. Flint has wandered away.
‘Right. But they’re not just skulls. They’re our ancestors. They need to be returned to their Spirit Land so they can enter the Dreaming.’
This is more or less what Cathbad had said but it sounds so much more impressive coming from Bob, out here under the darkening sky. Ruth shivers and holds Kate tighter.
‘Look out there,’ says Bob. He points over the Saltmarsh. You can’t see the sea any more but you can hear it, a rushing, urgent sound in the twilight. ‘This is sacred land. My people believe that the world was created in the Dreamtime when the spirit ancestors roamed the Earth. This place, it was made by the Great Snake. You can see its shape as it meandered over the land, creating all these little streams and rivers. That’s why I feel at home here. The Snake’s my tribal emblem. We need to take the Old Ones back so they can be at one with the Dreaming. For the Aborigines there’s no life and death, no yesterday and today, it’s all one. We need our ancestors with us so they can be part of the oneness. We can’t leave them to rot in some whitefella’s museum.’ He grins as he says the last bit, perhaps parodying himself, but Ruth doesn’t smile. She is thinking of Cathbad, all those years ago, demanding that the henge stay here, on the Saltmarsh, rather than be taken to a museum. ‘It belongs here,’ he had said, ‘between the earth and the sky.’ No wonder he and Bob are friends.
‘Won’t the museum return the… your ancestors?’ she asks, tentatively, thinking that she knows the answer.
‘No.’ Bob’s face darkens further. ‘I tell you Ruth, Lord Danforth Smith is a seriously bad man.’
Nelson sits at his desk, wondering whether it’s time to go home. It’s dark outside and there’s no real need to sit here, going over Chris Stephenson’s report and wondering what’s happening down at the docks. If there’s anything to report he’ll soon hear from Tanya and Tom Henty; he might as well wait in the comfort of his own sitting room. But still he sits in his office, drinking cold coffee and reading about pulmonary haemorrhage. The truth is that he doesn’t want to go home.
When Nelson had agreed not to see Ruth any more, he and Michelle had fallen into each other’s arms and into bed. It was the most emotional experience of his life. He had felt full of tenderness for Michelle, full of gratitude and remorse. At that moment, he would have promised her anything. But the euphoria hadn’t lasted. Michelle had not seemed able to stop talking about Ruth. ‘What was she like in bed? Was she better than me? What was it like sleeping with someone so fat?’ ‘Don’t,’ Nelson had begged. ‘Can’t we just forget it?’ But that, of course, was impossible. Now, six months later, Michelle fluctuates between tearful intensity (‘Promise you’ll never leave me’) and seeming indifference. Last night she had gone out with some of the girls at work and not returned until midnight. He had rung her several times but her phone was switched off. When she’d finally got in, he’d been sitting
